Barbara Shermund on the Cover of…Esquire

When Warren Bernard (of SPX) offered his scanned collection of advertising work by New Yorker cartoonists for use on this site, he included some bonus scans. Among them were non-advertising work by New Yorker contributors that appeared in Esquire. Looking through them the other day, Barnbara Shermund’s covers for Esquire popped out on the screen. Here are the four covers Mr. Bernard sent along. There are a number of Shermund Esquire cartoons in his collection as well — I’ll show those at a later time. If you want to read a quick capsule history of Ms. Shermund’s career, go here. Of note: Ms. Shermund had eight covers for The New Yorker. Her first was the 17th cover in the magazine’s history. I’ll show it here to give you an idea how her work changed from 1925 to the 1940s.

If you enlarge the covers, you’ll see that cartoonists appearing in each issue are named. You’ll also notice how many of them are New Yorker contributors (such as Garrett Price, Michael Berry, Frank Beaven, Howard Baer, E. Simms Campbell, Eldon Dedini, and Sam Cobean). A source (okay, it’s Bob Mankoff, Esquire’s cartoon editor) informed me that Esquire has a complete digital archive of all its cartoons — I’m hoping to get my hands on it one of these days in order to share even more cross-over information. Speaking of Sam Cobean, there was one Cobean Esquire cover included in Mr. Bernard’s collection:

Barbara Shermund (self portrait, above) Born, San Francisco. 1899. Studied at The California School of Fine Arts. Died, 1978, New Jersey. New Yorker work: June 13, 1925 thru September 16, 1944. 8 covers and 599 cartoons. Shermund’s later post-New Yorker work was featured in Esquire. (See Liza Donnelly’s book, Funny Ladies — a history of The New Yorker’s women cartoonists — for more on Shermund’s life and work)

Sam Cobean (pictured above. Source: Sam Cobean’s World. See link to site below) Born, December 28, 1913, Gettysburgh, Penn. Died, July 2, 1951, Watkins Glen, New York. NYer work: 1944 -1951. Collections: Cobean’s Naked Eye (Harper Bros.,1950), the Cartoons of Cobean (Harper & Bros.,1952). Cobean’s Estate set up a terrific website in his honor. It includes a lengthy biography, with photographs, as well as a detailed listing of all Cobean’s published work. Website: Sam Cobean’s World http://www.samcobean.com/